Units in the Second Row Taking Morale Damage - Bug?

[Truthlies]

I don't regularly browse here, so I apologize if there's been a recent post. If so, I didn't find anything.

In my battles, I've noticed infantry and cavalry in the second row, and thus not experiencing deaths, receiving morale damage. It appears to be the same as the unit in front of it.

For the following images, red is just to indicate which unit I have my cursor on, since it didn't appear in the screenshots.

Here, the front unit has 1.25 morale due to experiencing casualties.

The same day. Here, a unit in the second row, directly behind a unit with the same morale as in the first image, has 1.25 morale but no casualties.

This is a few days later. Flanking and troops entering the battle array seem to be working correctly, with morale being reduced at a very slow rate due to them receiving no casualties.

Based on this, I would guess that it's not intentional. Losing morale in the second row seems to be something meant to cause artillery to retreat before they are slaughtered when the troops in front of them retreat.

However, from a gameplay perspective, this suggests that reinforcing troops with extra infantry and cavalry is much more effective, as any of those left in the second row will retreat when the unit in front of them retreats.

I never noticed this in 1.15 or this patch, but that may have been because I never fought any close wars in those games until artillery became useful. I only noticed now because I kept being defeated despite having 40k to another country's 20k early game.

I guess what I'm looking for is discussion and whether I should actually submit a bug report. If this is a bug, with my game specifically or this patch in general, it seems a big one. If it isn't a bug, it is definitely an aspect of battles that people should be aware of, since it isn't included in the wiki.

 

[Octavius Antony]

Intentional, and unchanged for as long as I can recall. Every day spent in combat reduces a unit's morale by some small number, either 0.01 or 0.02. This is regardless of casualties, meaning that doomstacking your entire army is a waste.

 

[Truthlies]

Intentional, and unchanged for as long as I can recall. Every day spent in combat reduces a unit's morale by some small number, either 0.01 or 0.02. This is regardless of casualties, meaning that doomstacking your entire army is a waste.

I understand the small reductions of 0.01 or 0.02. That was in the wiki, so it was something I understood.
But in the second image, my infantry in the second line is equal in morale with that in front of it. This means that as the front row reaches 0 morale, so too does the second row. The first row retreats, then the second row moves up for one day of combat, and then retreats. That's much more severe than 0.01 or 0.02 per day, as this battle lasted less than a month.

 

[Octavius Antony]

There is an additional damage modifier that is applied to noncombatants, probably causing what is seen there. But my main advice for you is that you really don't need to use 40k infantry when your combat width is 20. Any units past combat width will be losing morale, while being utterly useless. I will go check a couple of things though, to see if I can reproduce what is happening there.

 

[alpaca]

This has been the way it worked for a long time, but I don't think it's a bug. I rationalized that the devs introduced it to make artillery that stands in the second row take morale damage so that your whole army will retreat at once, rather than only the inf retreating and the artillery taking a lot of damage before retreating. Could be wrong, of course.

The first time I really paid close attention to it was after Common Sense, so this is the earliest time I can vouch for things having worked this way, but I feel as if hey have for longer. The obvious approach to leverage this is to only send an army with full combat width into the battle, and keep the rest in a neighboring province to send in two weeks later or so. This will let you have fresh troops while the AI, who push all their units in at once, will have low morale. For example, when you fight in a mountain province early game, only send in 10 troops and then another 10 some time later. This will almost always allow you to beat the AI.

 

[bbqftw]

This has been the way it worked for a long time, but I don't think it's a bug. I rationalized that the devs introduced it to make artillery that stands in the second row take morale damage so that your whole army will retreat at once, rather than only the inf retreating and the artillery taking a lot of damage before retreating. Could be wrong, of course.

In theory if artillery never routed, in lategame where artillery fire damage is really high it would theoretically be ideal (if you had the force limit) to run heavily depleted regiments in front line, since I don't believe that even zero-strength regiments rout until after a full 3-day phase

 

[Gans]

I rationalized that the devs introduced it to make artillery that stands in the second row take morale damage so that your whole army will retreat at once.

No. They did it so a giant doomstack of infantry wont keep fighting for years or decades until one side runs out like vanilla Vicky2 late game armies. Or do you think it should be first line dies off, and then comes the next, full strength, full morale, and the next, the next.....

 

[Vetgirig]

Its intended. Even those troops that is avaiable, but not present on the battle field take moral damage.

Arumba in his videos usually micromanage army composition to maximize effectivness off it - by just sending the minimum troops needed for maximum combat effect into a battle.

 

[alpaca]

No. They did it so a giant doomstack of infantry wont keep fighting for years or decades until one side runs out like vanilla Vicky2 late game armies. Or do you think it should be first line dies off, and then comes the next, full strength, full morale, and the next, the next.....

No, but I think a solution in between would make most sense. The current situation is clearly not optimal either where units not at all participating in the battle get the same morale damage as units that get fully hit. It makes quality far too strong compared to quantity. Maybe each unit participating in the battle could get some morale damage based on casualties/army size every day (note that I'm not proposing it be proportional), with the regiment that is hit getting hit taking morale damage based on unit casualties/unit strength.

 

[Truthlies]

This has been the way it worked for a long time, but I don't think it's a bug.

Wow that's quite a bit ago. I'm surprised it's not mentioned in the wiki. If it is, it should definitely be emphasized more as I never noticed it or even thought to question my assumption that the second row only took minimal morale damage.

 

[bleakie]

Is it possible that the 0.01 or 0.02 morale damage is referring to reserves instead of backrow units?

 

[Onirim]

...
This is a few days later. Flanking and troops entering the battle array seem to be working correctly, with morale being reduced at a very slow rate due to them receiving no casualties.
...

I never paid attention to it. So, you mean units at the center (front and rear lines) get the same morale loss while units at the flanks receive slower morale damage? Maybe it has to do with the width relation of the two armies? How can you tell that is due to losses?

 

[Truthlies]

I never paid attention to it. So, you mean units at the center (front and rear lines) get the same morale loss while units at the flanks receive slower morale damage? Maybe it has to do with the width relation of the two armies? How can you tell that is due to losses?

Yes that is what is happening. Units in the second row are taking the morale damage that the unit in front of it receives. So for units in the front row that are not being damaged (those on the flanks), they, as well as any units behind them, only take 0.01 or 0.02 per day. However, for the units in the middle who are actually being damaged, they, as well as any units behind them, take a significant amount of damage. So if you have two infantry, one behind the other and with the same starting morale, both will reach zero morale at the same time, assuming they stay in that position. The front one will retreat, then the second will move to front for a day and then retreat, as it is at zero morale.
I can tell what is due to losses by looking at units that are at full strength and comparing morale. In this example, the enemy only has 15 combat width, so there are 4 cavalry flanking (and thus receiving no damage) with an additional unit on the flank doing nothing, since flanking range is 2 when I tested this. The morale of the flanking units and the non-flanking unit is the same and much higher than the units in the center, so I can tell that morale loss for them is just a normal 0.01 or 0.02 per day.
This means that if you are fighting with more than units than your combat width, before you start using artillery, you are throwing away your units by sending them in a giant stack. You should instead only send in combat width, then reinforce as needed. The reinforcements generally need to come in soon though, as morale early game can reach zero after 2 or 3 phases, if the die rolls are bad.

 

[Onirim]

Ok, so if units in frontline switch position daily with the second line it means that in the long term they both will lose morale at the same rate and then it is working as it should. Segments engaged in combat should lose morale at the same rate for both units in frontline as well as backline. No bug here. It's the way it's meant. Do you think so?

 

[Truthlies]

Ok, so if units in frontline switch position daily with the second line it means that in the long term they both will lose morale at the same rate and then it is working as it should. Segments engaged in combat should lose morale at the same rate for both units in frontline as well as backline. No bug here. It's the way it's meant. Do you think so?

Not sure if you're understanding correctly. The units in the second row lose morale without being injured. They play no role in the combat, but still receive the same morale damage as the unit in front of it, so you end up with those units doing nothing. The units are never switching places until the first unit retreats. At that point, the second moves forward but has zero morale, since it took the same morale damage as the unit in front of it. It then battles for one day and then runs.

If it's intentional, it doesn't really make much sense from a real life perspective, at least for cavalry and infantry. The second row in these battles would be the reserves, whose purpose is to provide additional support where necessary. If a regiment routed, the reserves would be sent to fill the gap in the line. The reserves routing after a frontline unit routes would be a rarity.

Obviously, this game isn't supposed to be realistic, but having the reserves route with the frontline is ridiculous. It means you need to micromanage battles. If this weren't the case, micromanaging would still be beneficial, as there's the slight 0.01 or 0.02 morale damage takes it toll, but you can still win without trying to avoid it.

 

[Onirim]

Right, I hadn't noticed they weren't taking injuries. So reserves are not being used here as a relief (taking turns with units engaged in the front). I don't know why the heavy morale loss. Does it always happen or it only happens when above combat width? If it only happens in too narrow combats it would be something intended maybe to penalize an unfitting army overly big.

 

[Truthlies]

It works the same as above for full combat width. I spawned 90k rebels and managed to beat them fairly easily with 60k troops by sending 20k at a time, since 20 is combat width at the at tech 3. There were no modifiers since it was grasslands and neither of us used a general. Just by staggering by 9 days it made a big difference since battles in that period end in less than a month.

 

[Onirim]

I'm confused about reserves and rows and lines. How I see it:

• Infantry units deploy in line (it doesn't matter wether it is a single line of say 1k men or a double line of 500)
• There's a front row where units can engage in actual combat
• There's a back row where infantry units which are unable to be deployed in the front row due to combat width will be deployed and used as reserve to reinforce holes in the front (units which lost morale and fled away from engagement - squared removed from the 'combat bar')

But what happens when you have more infantry units which can't be located neither in front nor in back rows? Where are those units? For example 24 infantry, 15 cavalry, and 26 artillery when combat width is 26 will have 8 inf and 5 cav as a reserve not fielded as explained in the wiki. And wht about their morale?

Is it possible that the 0.01 or 0.02 morale damage is referring to reserves instead of backrow units?

This

 

[Octavius Antony]

Units that don't fit on the field are in reserve, which you can see by hovering over the number on the combat screen. These units take only the lowest morale damage modifier for daily tick. Units on the field are subject to that tick, plus combat damage, plus an additional modifier that I think is what causes units standing behind combat damaged regiments to suffer morale damage. The additional modifier is so that artillery can't just fight forever during mid-late battles, since they rarely take casualties themselves.

The moral of the story being this, don't throw more troops than you need into a fight. Your armies should ideally be, combat width of infantry plus four cavalry for western nations. As you can add artillery, start small, but aim for 80% of your combat width as your force limits and economy expand. You'll almost never lose battles with near even quality by doing this, and can beat much larger AI doomstacks by not falling into the trap of slamming your entire army into a fight that they can't do anything in.

 

[Onirim]

Ok, thanks, that's helpful. Now I don't get why having men in reserve (those not fielded) is a bad idea. I don't get why a larger army is beaten by a smaller one because this one is not exceeding the combat width in size while the bigger one is. I thought having units in reserve was the fastest wayto make them enter the battlefield as soon as needed (with not optimal morale due to that tick, granted) while a second army in another province needs time to get into battle and it means a micromanagement effort for the player. Units in reserve can fill immediately the holes in the second row if I'm right (in OP's picture #4, France's 2nd row holes can be seen).

And exactly the same morale loss for any kind of units behind units under fire is still a mystery I think. I don't like gamey games, I'm always for realism and would like to know what this could be representing.